A Deadly Vineyard Holiday (26 page)

She stared at me with wide, wide eyes and pressed her hands together prayerfully. “A real human being? Me? You mean like happened to Pinocchio?”

“Exactly. On the other hand, you're a cricket yourself.”

“Do I get to have a cricket?”

“Naturally.”

“What a happy day this is, cousin Jeff. So kind of you to clarify things for me.”

“What are cousins for? Go on, now. Have a soda.”

The night was a quiet one, as I know since I was up for most of it, just in case Shadow was smarter than I expected. But he didn't show up, and in the early light of dawn, I drove Karen and Debby to Menemsha, where they boarded the
Matilda
and met Jimmy Souza, who had no idea that he was playing host to the president's daughter, but who was obviously charmed by having such lovely feminine company aboard his boat. I watched them as the
Matilda
went out past the yachts into Vineyard Sound, then drove back to Bill Vanderbeck's house, picked up Zee, and went on to Joe Begay's place.

There, over coffee, envious Zee chatted with pregnant Toni, and Joe Begay, who knew how to listen, did that as I talked.

“It sounds like things are coming to a head,” he said, when I was done. “Do you need any help?”

“I can always use help,” I said. Which turned out to be very true.

As Zee and I drove toward Edgartown through the warming August air, the island seemed particularly beautiful to me: Faint mists were rising from Menemsha Pond, the green trees looked ethereal, and even the houses along the roadside were clothed in a special morning light that gave them a fairy-tale appearance. I saw all this beauty, and thought of the people in those innocent houses and of the torturer's horse and of the dogs going on with their doggy lives.

And I thought of what might happen before the day was ended, and I wondered what I wished.

Did I wish that I'd never met Cricket Callahan? Had we never met, I'd not know about the letters or about Shadow, and this morning I'd be at home with Zee, paying no heed to presidential doings, instead of driving down this road, hoping to prove someone a villain by looking at a dead man's photographs.

Or was it okay that Cricket had come down the beach and that Zee and I had become entangled in the webs that encircled her? Troubles had come with Cricket, albeit through no fault of hers, and our quiet lives had become dangerous as a consequence, but given my druthers, would I really have preferred to know nothing of Shadow and his threats?

Zee complicated things. If she was somewhere else, somewhere safe—visiting her parents, for instance, or otherwise
far away in America for some reason—I recognized that I would accept the danger in exchange for the knowledge, because the knowledge was leading me to Shadow, and once I had Shadow, Cricket would be safe. Or safer, at least, since public people like her are never completely safe from the other Shadows out there. Safer, then; which, though an imperfect consummation of this case, was nevertheless devoutly to be wished.

But Zee wasn't in America, and wouldn't go if I asked her to. Would be irked, in fact, by the very idea that I thought that she should seek sanctuary that I wouldn't seek myself. Zee did not take to the notion that she needed to be protected by her husband, or by anybody else.

Good old Zee. I glanced at her.

“Why are you smiling?” she asked, smiling.

“Because you're you.”

She kissed me. “And you're you.”

Futile efforts sometimes have to be made, even though you know they're doomed to failure. I said, “I don't suppose you'd agree to go visit your folks for a couple of days, starting right now?”

“I knew you were going to say something like that sooner or later. No.”

“I knew you were going to say that.”

“Then why did you ask?” she asked.

“We truly manly men always try to get our womenfolk out of the line of fire.”

“If you think I'm going to get out of the line of fire and leave you in it, you've got another think coming!”

“Do you think we're actually in the line of fire?”

“I think Debby's got troubles and that as long as we're near her, we've got them, too.”

“Should we step away from her, then?”

“I've been thinking about that.”

“And?”

“I guess we could. After all, protecting her is the Secret Service's job, not ours.”

“So?”

“The thing is, I like Debby, and I think that we've not only kept Shadow away from her while she's been with us, but that she's had her Roman holiday, too, what with palling around with the twins and Allen Freeman, doing the things a normal girl does on vacation. And if you're right about Burt Phillips's pictures, we may get Shadow before he can find her again, and that makes it even more important to stick with her. Besides, the president of the United States may be coming to our house on Sunday, and I doubt if that'll ever happen again, and it won't happen this time if anything happens to Debby first.”

“So we stay in the picture.”

“Yes. But we're not going to do anything foolish.”

“Foolish?” I said, putting a hand on my chest. “Me do something foolish? Redickle-dockle!”

“It's a good thing you're married,” said Zee seriously. “You need a wife to look after you.”

“But you're probably wrong about one thing,” I said. “I'll bet that once Prez comes to our clambake, he'll beg for more invitations in the future. We won't be able to keep him away.”

“You really are a very strange man,” said Zee, giving me another kiss. “But I love you anyway for some reason.”

“Get on your trusty car phone and call Jake Spitz,” I said. “See if he can meet us in, say, an hour or two. Someplace private.”

She reached for the phone. “What'll I tell him it's all about?”

“Tell him it's about cousin Debby and Shadow. And tell him not to tell the Secret Service guys about the meeting.”

She dialed and asked for Spitz, gave her name, listened, waited, said thank you, and hung up, then dialed again, gave her name, listened, put a hand over the speaker, and turned to me.

“It's taking a while, but at least I'm talking to human beings and not to one of those machines that wants you to dial a number on your Touch-Tone phone before you can actually get through.” She turned away and took her hand off the speaker. “Yes. Hi, Jake, it's Zee Jackson. Jeff and I would like to meet you in an hour or so, and we'd just as soon not have anybody else know about it. No, it's not supposed to be a rendezvous between you and me, but now that you mention it, maybe I can get rid of Jeff between now and then. How about the Fireside, in Oak Bluffs? I doubt if anybody you know will be there in the morning. Good. See you.” She hung up and looked at me. “He didn't ask what it was about. He just said he'd see us there.”

“The Fireside, eh? I wouldn't have thought of that.”

“You think of a lot of things, but not of everything, Sweets.”

“You occupy so much of my mind that there just isn't room for much else in my brain.”

“Some people would say there wasn't much room there anyway. But not me. I'd never say that.”

We drove down into Edgartown just early enough to find a parking space and just late enough to find the photography shop open. Perfect timing.

“Here you are, Mr. Jackson,” said the clerk, bringing me the developed film. “Sorry this wasn't ready yesterday when your friend came by to pick it up, but we'd
gotten your film mixed up with someone else's and didn't get things straightened out till last night. Hope you didn't have to make a special trip this morning.”

“No problem,” I said. “What did my friend look like?”

He arched a brow. “Don't you know?”

“It doesn't make any difference. It's just that it could have been one of several people.”

“Ah,” said the clerk. “Well, I'm afraid I don't know. I was on my lunch hour when your friend came in.”

I put a warm grin on my face. “Male or female?”

He grinned back. “Can't help you, Mr. Jackson.” Then he was suddenly serious. “There's no problem, is there? You did authorize your friend to pick up the film?”

“No problem at all,” I said, digging out my wallet. “Whoever came by had my okay.”

“If you want, I'll talk to the clerk who waited on your friend.”

“Thanks. It's not important, but I am curious.”

“Be glad to, Mr. Jackson. We want our customers to be happy.”

Walking back to the car, Zee said, “Who was it? Shadow?”

“That's my guess.”

“But how did he know the film was there?”

“He heard me say I was going to take the film in. We didn't get rid of the bugs in our house until afterwards.”

Shadow couldn't stop me from having the film developed, and he didn't know where I took it, but by passing himself off as my friend, sent to pick up the film, he could make the rounds of photography shops until he found the right one, and this being the friendly Vineyard, where bad guys don't try to steal rolls of film,
he stood a good chance of getting the film before we did. In fact, it was just luck that he didn't, but that bit of luck, good for me, bad for him, might just be the luck that showed his face to me.

We got into the Land Rover and opened the package of prints.

Burt Phillips's last photographs were of driveways.

I recognized the one leading down to the president's vacation hideaway. Burt had taken several pictures of cars going in and coming out. The license plates were pretty clear on all of the cars. Burt no doubt had a contact somewhere—probably in the Registry of Motor Vehicles—who could tell him who owned or had rented the cars, so that Burt could know who was entering and leaving the compound.

I didn't recognize any other driveways until I was nearly through the prints. Then I saw our own.

The first of a series of shots was of the entrance to the driveway. The second was of our mailbox, with the driveway in the background. Burt had apparently gotten out of his car for that shot. The third picture was of John Skye's Wagoneer coming out of the drive. There was none of it going in. That meant that Burt had either neglected to take a picture of the Wagoneer when it turned into the drive, or that he had arrived between the time the twins arrived and the time they and Debby left for the beach. Although Debby had been in the Wagoneer when it left, she couldn't really be seen in the photograph because she had apparently been sitting on the far side of the rear seat, with one of the twins (don't ask me which) between her and Burt's camera.

The next picture was of Zee and me in the Land Cruiser, as we headed for the clamming flats. Burt had a pretty good shot of Zee looking right at him.

The next photo was of a Volvo entering the driveway, and the one after that was of the Volvo coming back out and turning toward Vineyard Haven. I could see an elbow sticking out of the driver-side window, but I couldn't see the face that went with the elbow.

The next three were a sequence: the Land Cruiser turning into the driveway; the Land Cruiser stopped, its driver's door open, and me walking toward the camera; and a photo of me getting closer.

That was when Burt had put down his camera and driven away.

The last picture was of Zee's little Jeep coming out of the drive, as she had headed for work at the hospital later that afternoon. Burt had come back in time to take that shot and to be seen by Zee, who had reported him to me. It was the last photograph old Burt ever took.

Zee tapped a finger on the pictures of the Volvo.

“If we can find out who was in that car, we'll know . . .” She paused. “What'll we know?”

I said, “We'll know who went down to our house while we were gone, at least. Maybe we'll know more.”

“Can you find out who owns the car?”

“If I can't, Jake Spitz can. Let's go.”

“It didn't have a front license plate. How are we going to ID it?”

“Jake can double-check, but I think I know who owns it.”

“Who?”

“I saw it, or one like it, up at Barbara Miller's house. It belongs to her sister, Margaret.”

“Barbara Miller's sister went down to our house while we were gone? What for?” Zee put her hand to her mouth. “You mean she may be Shadow?”

“Maybe, but I doubt it.”

“Mysteriouser and mysteriouser,” said Zee.

Actually, I thought things were clearing up. I was down to two suspects, although I didn't know who the second one was yet.

“Jake should be able to tell us what we need to know,” I said.

While I drove, Zee went through the pictures again. “I'd guess Burt Phillips took pictures of the cars that came and went from the president's compound,” she said. “Then he traced the cars to find out who was socializing with Joe Callahan. Then he hung around the houses where those people lived and tried to get pictures of them, or maybe even of the Callahans themselves. If nothing else, he got pictures of more cars that presumably contained people who were in the president's social circle. All so he could sell stories and photos to outfits like the
National Planet.
”

“Everybody's got to make a living somehow.”

“If all he got was pictures of cars, it's quite a stretch to make a story out of them.”

“People who read the
National Planet
are used to stretches. They thrive on stretches. ‘I was a love child of Elvis and a creature from outer space.' Compared to stuff like that, Burt was a model of scientific method.”

In Oak Bluffs, we found a spot to leave the car over by the wonderfully renovated Victorian house on the south side of the park, and walked back past the music grandstand to the Fireside, on Circuit Avenue.

The Fireside is far from being the island's classiest saloon, but it's popular with the young crowd and with a lot of old boozers, too. It's where all of the island's barroom fights used to start before such fracases became popular in Edgartown as well. The whole place smells of spilled beer, cigarettes, grass, and various bodily emissions.
My young friend Bonzo, who long ago blew out a perfectly good brain with some bad acid, now works at the Fireside at the end of a broom or clearing tables. Bonzo labors happily and tirelessly to keep things clean, but there's too much Fireside and not enough Bonzo for him to accomplish that aim, so the bar always looks and smells like it could use a good scrubbing.